Contact centers service incoming contacts from customers while predictive dialing facilities initiate outgoing customer contacts regarding goods and services. An important function in contact centers and predictive dialing facilities is monitoring performance in light of policies and objectives. An ongoing problem, particularly in large and/or distributed systems, is enabling one or more supervisory staff members to monitor performance of resources, particularly contact center agents. Supervisory staff members are on their feet much of the day circulating between contact center agents, adding to job fatigue. This problem is made only worse by covering agents spread over a large physical area. In geographically distributed contact centers, in particular the problem is different because the supervisory staff members must understand the issue and access screen information being viewed by a remote agent. This can add time to the customer experience while the supervisory staff loads and reviews the screen information.
Because of these problems, a large number of supervisory staff are generally required for contact center and predictive dialing operations. Supervisory staff are more highly compensated than typical contact center and predictive dialing agents.
A related problem is that agent behaviors can change when a supervisor is nearby. Some agents become nervous and less effective compared to his or her normal performance level. Other agents perform better because of the effect of “the boss” watching. Thus, the physical presence of the supervisor may have an undesirable impact on contact center monitoring and/or performance.
A further problem arises from requiring supervisors to carry devices for accessing dashboards or other comparative performance monitoring information while helping or assisting agents. It would be advantageous to multitask easily between helping agents and monitoring performance dashboards.
There is a need for increasing the effectiveness of supervisory staff in contact center and predictive dialer operations while avoiding the deviant agent behavior from a supervisory staff member being in close physical proximity to the agent.